When did you first realise that you wanted to work in Africa?

The momentum to go overseas was meeting my husband when we were doing our MRCP exams (Membership of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK). We both knew we really wanted to go overseas and were very focused on finishing our clinical training and getting out there. We were engaged within three months, resigned from our jobs and thought, ‘let’s do it’. We started in Vanuatu in the South Pacific over 20 years ago but felt that the real epicentre of malaria was in Africa.

What are you working on at the moment?

Last year we stopped a trial of fluid resuscitation to treat shock – standard treatment for very sick children in hospitals globally. The Data Monitoring Committee, an independent body set up especially for the trial, said the results showed the treatment did not benefit African children with the conditions we were treating. We’re preparing a paper to give further insight into why we think this controversial result challenges practice internationally. What makes you get up in the morning? I feel a great sense of responsibility to my extremely humane, hard-working colleagues. I’m also incurably curious – I enjoy trying to work out what the next question is.

What have you learned from the people you have met in Africa and what have they learned from you?

When we first went to hospitals where research had never been done, I thought, ‘How can people work in such awful conditions?’ I was really impressed at how calm and pragmatic the staff are – they’ve seen many awful things. We painted the wards, put in emergency equipment, and trained everybody in the hospital in acute paediatrics. That was the momentum for them developing their own training programme and taking pride in their hospital.